One new and innovative component to Mobile Agents this season is the Remote Science Team. The Mobile Agents Remote Science Team (MARST) is separate from the MDRS RST, although several members of that team belong to the MARST.

Our role in the field tests being conducted over the next two weeks is to analyze both the data being sent to us via the Mobile Agents and the EVA Plans developed by the crew. We have a number of specialized tools to assist us in this process. In addition to the Mobile Agents Architecture described by Maarten (see Mission Information-Mobile Agents), which gives us access to collected data in real time and the ability to view the crew's EVA planning meetings, we also have tools which allow us to conduct daily teleconferences and create recommendations using a shared computer screen.

All of this technology is dazzling, and quite exciting to work with. It offers us to opportunity to really focus on the requirements needed for good communication and collaboration between scientists on Earth and those on Mars, and not just in terms of the technology.

The MARST is scattered across the globe. There are three "legs" to our team, one located at the University of Buffalo, another at Northern Arizona University and the last in England. Melissa Farley is leading the Buffalo team, a group of geology graduate students. Stacy Sklar, a student at Northern Arizona University, is leading a team made up of geologists from the MDRS RST. Simon Buckingham Shum of The Open University in the UK leads our meeting facilitators, who are the computer experts of the MARST. My role as RST Lead is coordinator of the individual legs, as well as Point of Contact between the Crew Uplink Lead (Maarten) and the MARST.

So it probably isn't surprising that one of the first challenges we faced, as an international team, is time. There is a ten-hour time difference between those in England and those of us on the west coast of the United States, and a three-hour time difference between those on the west coast and team members on the east coast of the U.S. This meant that scheduling our meetings and even reviewing the data were going to take some careful planning.

The real time data downloads aren't the problem. The RST scientists are able to review them during the day, since most of us are in North America. The problem is with the meeting replay. The crew's debrief, which is recorded once the crew returns from EVA in the afternoon, is sent to England for processing into the meeting replay (see Mission Information-Schedule). This occurs during the regular workday in England, but for me it is night. The result is that the final product is ready for viewing at 3 am on the West Coast. The RST members have to view the meeting replay and create new Compendium maps outlining their recommendations to the crew, all before a teleconference (the Science Operations Working Group (SOWG) Meeting) at 5 am to summarize and finalize these recommendations in order to have that information available to the crew at 7 am! This means, for me anyway, that I will be getting up at 3 am every morning during the next two weeks when an EVA is conducted at MDRS. We anticipate that will be three days this week, and 5 days next week.

Of course, on a real Mars mission, the RST scientists will have only one job, that of supporting the scientists on Mars. Until that time, I will have to make do with very little sleep.

RST Summary for today:

All data were successfully relayed to the RST by the agents via Science Organizer and email alerts. A small glitch in the URL links on the email alerts will be corrected tomorrow.

Individual RST members reviewed the two panorama images taken by the ERA and their corresponding GPS coordinates.

Tomorrow we will have our first SOWG Meeting.